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To Stew Steaks

A stew of thinly sliced beef with carrot, turnip, pepper, salt, and ketchup, thickened with oswego and optionally served with pasta.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Place the sliced beef in a stewpan and add enough water to create gravy.

  2. Add the grated carrot, turnip squares, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Stew for 1 hour or until the beef is tender, skimming off any fat if necessary.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the stew with a little oswego and flavor with ketchup.

  2. If desired, add macaroni or vermicelli and boil for an additional 10 to 20 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing in liquid.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the gravy as it softens during stewing.
Turnip
Softens during stewing and adds a mild, slightly peppery flavor to the gravy.
Oswego
Starch that thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it body.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that deepen the flavor of the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the stew with a little oswego. Starch must be added in small amounts and heated to thicken. Adding too much at once can leave lumps or an overly thick, pasty gravy, so add it gradually and let it simmer.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, pepper, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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